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In Heaven, It Is Autumn All Year Round

The Wissahickon Valley is a 1,400-acre park in the northwest corner of Philadelphia proper. Second to none when it comes to beautiful scenery all year round, the area is particularly breathtaking in autumn. No wonder it has inspired poets, writers, photographers, and painters for so many centuries.

Nowadays, the park hosts mostly pedestrians, equestrians, hikers and bikers. (Few rollerbladers come here, however, since the vast majority of paths are unpaved.) Scattered alongside the wooded paths, ancient trees bear the markings of time’s passage. Young lovers have carved their initials in various tree trunks, their etchings having stretched in curious ways as the trunks widened over the course of many decades.

Indeed, here in the Wissahickon, the trees seem to whisper the deepest, most heartfelt secrets of the natural world.